Commerce Cabinet Crisis XVI: John T. Connor

Born in November of 1914, John T Connor was a young New York attorney in 1942 when he somehow found himself attached to one of the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development medical branches working on pharmaceuticals. Specifically, he was involved in the logistics of coordinating penicillin production. After the war he worked for Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal in which capacity he “disassembled the military penicillin program and incorporated it into the private sector”. Having done that for two years, Connor became a pioneer in the field of cashing in by signing up with Merck as General Counsel. In 1964, he co-chaired the National Independent Committee for Johnson-Humphrey, which I guess was a kind of front organization designed to showcase support for the ticket from eastern moderate Republicans.
With the election won, Johnson moved to replace JFK holdover cabinet members with his own guys, and thus did Connor become Commerce Secretary, inaugurating the concept of making this department a place to stash an important fundraiser from the business world. Typically for a Commerce Secretary, he didn’t play a significant role in the formation of Johnson administration economic policy. These were, however, the years in which the Bretton-Woods system started running into trouble so one important Connor initiative was an effort to corral/cajole American businessmen into taking voluntary action to stem the flow of dollars out of the country.
An early opponent of the war in Vietnam, Connor ended up resigning in 1967 after proving unable to persuade the administration that the war was damaging the country’s economy. Upon stepping down, Connor swiftly became CEO of Allied Chemical and then once Richard Nixon was in office he founded an organization called Business Executives Against the Vietnam War.

A Defence Department plan to have the private sector play more of a role in maintaining the new ships and other equipment the military expects to purchase is plagued with problems, including a lack of accountability and resistance among federal public servants to the proposal, according to a report obtained by the Citizen.
The Department of National Defence has already started a number of pilot projects on what it is calling its Sustainment Initiative and hopes to formally launch the program in June.

A Navy document released under the Freedom Information Act suggests the Navy planned and then retreated from naming one of its Littoral Combat Ships "Liberty," say members of the Liberty Veterans Association.

Acting U.S. Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank today participated in a Joining
Forces Veterans Hiring Event that recognized Veterans Day and the contributions
of our men and women in uniform. The event, sponsored by Honeywell and their
military recruitment partner Orion International, aimed to identify and match
veteran job candidates with open positions at Honeywell and recognized
Honeywell’s efforts to provide veterans with more career opportunities.
Honeywell’s Chairman and CEO Dave Cote and Joining Forces Executive Director
Todd Veazie also attended.
“The Department
of Commerce takes this Administration’s commitment to hiring veterans very
seriously, and we will do our part to support the Joining Forces initiative and
the good work of companies like Honeywell and Orion International that are
connecting members of our military with the quality private-sector jobs they
have earned,” said Acting U.S. Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank. “Through the
Department’s strong relationship with private sector companies all over the
country, we will be encouraging other firms to commit to hiring veterans, and we
will do all we can to help them make that goal a reality.”

Guest blog by Matt Erskine, Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic DevelopmentTo mark the one-year anniversary of the White House Startup America Initiative, in January President Obama sent Congress a proposal to expand tax relief and unlock capital for startups and small businesses that are creating jobs.When he launched the initiative a year ago, the president sought to promote the success of entrepreneurs across the country. The private sector responded with the Startup America Partnership, launching new entrepreneurial networks all across the country. AOL co-founder and member of the President’s Jobs Council, Steve Case, and the Kauffman Foundation joined to form the Startup America Partnership, which is a nonprofit alliance of entrepreneurs, major corporations and service providers that has mobilized more than $1 billion in business resources to serve as many as 100,000 startups over the next three years.This year, the administration unveiled several new agency actions to accelerate the growth of young, job-creating companies, at the same time that new entrepreneur-led regional coalitions are launching throughout the nation.One of those efforts will fuel regional innovation. In the coming months, the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), along with several Federal partners, will launch the third round of the i6 Challenge, a multiagency competition which funds regional collaborations to bring innovative, ground-breaking ideas from the lab to the marketplace, creating new startups and jobs across the country. Commerce is also launching a new initiative to connect entrepreneurs with the resources made available through the Startup America Partnership and its partners.

By Dylan Matthews
Besides their apparent inability to spot a scientific consensus in plain view, the thing that puzzles me the most about climate change deniers is why, exactly, they think those trying to stop climate change are so invested in doing so. Bret Stephens, in a particularly tendentious denialist column in the Wall Street Journal, thinks he's got the answer: